Ever wondered how to deliver a judgment in court? According to Mrs Justice Cox, it's as simple as ABCDE: accuracy, brevity, clarity, decisiveness and explanation.

The high court judge was delivering a lecture on judgecraft to a group of 36 full-time circuit and district judges from the crown court, the county courts and the magistrates' courts. They had chosen the craft of judging from a range of annual refresher courses offered by the Judicial College, the body that now trains all levels of the judiciary.

Meeting for their two-and-a-half day intensive course at an out-of-the way conference hotel in the Midlands, the judges were pretty unrecognisable in their sweaters and jeans (and one or two skirts). While I was there, they also heard a revealing lecture from Judge Phillips, the college's director of studies, on how to assess the credibility of a witness.

The idea that judges must be trained by other judges is fundamental to judicial independence. Academics may be invited to give lectures and evaluate training methods. But civil servants have no involvement in judicial training.

Until the 1970s, judges resented the idea that they even needed to be taught at all. Indeed, some thought it positively harmful: in 1976, Lord Devlin said that the words "judicial training" occasioned alarm. That's why the euphemism "Judicial Studies Board" was chosen when the first training body was set up in 1979. The JSB was proudly reborn as the Judicial College last April when training for courts was merged with training for tribunals; as many as 20 of these less formal courts had their own arrangements until then.

Setting up a full-time judicial college was a suggestion made by Lord Pannick QC in Judges, a book he wrote as long ago as 1987. But some judges regretted the loss last year of the JSB as a well-known brand.

"Our job is a hard one," Laura Cox told her fellow judges this week. Quoting from Pannick's book, she said that "judges repeatedly do what the rest of us seek to avoid: make decisions." She told them they would receive practical advice on how to handle themselves in court, how to deal with litigants and witnesses and what to do when things went wrong.

But the highlight of these courses has always been the practical exercises. Each judge has to sit in a mocked-up courtroom for a 10-minute hearing, with five other judges watching and waiting their turn. Actors and lawyers play out the sort of challenges a judge may face in any jurisdiction - anything from an aggressive QC questioning a dyslexic defendant to a claimant who is unwilling to remove her niqab while giving evidence - and the judge receives feedback on how well he or she copes.

It's just as useful for the other judges in the room. In the normal course of their work, they never see how another judge conducts a case. A lot depends on the individual, as I observed in another practical exercise.

The judges were shown video extracts from a carefully scripted trial, again acted out by lawyers and actors. A woman claimed her bag had been snatched and money stolen. The defendant claimed she had nothing to do with it. The judges were asked to imagine they were sitting with lay magistrates in the crown court to hear an appeal against conviction. They were asked to deliver an oral judgment, allowing or dismissing the appeal as appropriate.

It was a finely balanced case and nobody was too surprised that one of the crown court judges allowed the appeal while another dismissed it. What none of the judges had spotted was that both the complainant and the defendant were lying about what had happened, although for different reasons.

And what was striking was that the judges who rarely heard criminal cases delivered longer rulings than those who tried them regularly. In civil cases, the judge is expected to set out all the relevant evidence before giving a reasoned conclusion. That's not always the practice in crime.

One of the criminal judges delivered a judgment of almost poetic brevity, "reminding himself" of a point of law that, if not mentioned, could form the basis of a further challenge; declaring that the case had not been proved to the required standard; and then allowing the appeal. He then added a sentence blaming the police for not investigating the defendant's alibi.

This led to a lively debate about the extent to which judges sitting in the crown court should give detailed reasons when allowing or dismissing a defendant's appeal. Should a judge say why the complainant was not believed or is is better to say simply that the burden of proof has not been satisfied? Can one refer to a complainant as a victim before the case has been proved?

In recent years, government ministers have increasingly focused attention on the interests of bereaved relatives and other witnesses, allowing victims to describe their feelings and the impact of the crime in statements read to the court. How should judges balance the concerns of the victim against the rights of the defendant?

Learning how to judge is becoming increasingly important because it is no longer essential for new recruits to sit part-time before taking a full-time judicial appointment. This change has been made to encourage a more diverse judiciary: solicitors find it difficult to take days off to sit as judges, and tribunal judges seeking an appointment in the courts judiciary may also face difficulties.

You'd think, therefore, that the government would be pouring money into the new Judicial College, realising that its induction courses in judgecraft and refresher courses like this one are essential if we are to maintain high judicial standards.

Think on. Like other bodies funded by the Ministry of Justice, the college is having to cut its budget by 6 per cent a year for four years. Poor judgment, if you ask me.

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